


They Were Roommates, with Emphasis on the 'Were'

by cultivationtrash (writing_in_the_dark)



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Fluff, M/M, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_in_the_dark/pseuds/cultivationtrash
Summary: One man is being kicked out of his home in favor of a lover moving in while the other is being abandoned with ten months left on his lease. Neither can afford rent alone, so they're forced to become roommates. Everything is normal between them until one of them drunkenly falls asleep in the wrong bed.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71





	They Were Roommates, with Emphasis on the 'Were'

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [oh my god...they were in quarantine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24194368) by [luckystars1015](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckystars1015/pseuds/luckystars1015). 



> Written for GinHiji Week 2020 - Day 6 prompt: "They were roommates." I wasn't going to write anything for this prompt, but I was struck with inspiration when I saw luckystars1015's artwork, which you can very at the very bottom of the story "oh my god...they were in quarantine."
> 
> Cross-posted from tumblr

It all started when a police officer and a suspect he was investigating fell in love. Within three months, their whirlwind romance escalated to the point where the latter asked the former to move in with him.

The couple couldn't have been happier, but their existing roommates weren't exactly thrilled. One was being booted out to give the lovers their alone time. The other was being abandoned with ten months remaining on his apartment’s lease. Neither man made enough money to afford rent on his own.

The couple proposed a solution to their soon-to-be-former roommates. They would basically swap roommates. Having few alternatives, the jilted roommates reluctantly agreed to live with a total stranger.

The roommate who was stuck in a lease agreement was a workaholic who didn’t come home but to bathe and get a few hours of sleep a night. The man who was kicked to the curb was the opposite of a workaholic, but he did work sometimes. He often went out drinking, playing pachinko, or hanging out with friends. When he was home, he read manga, watched TV, and slept. The two didn't cross paths frequently, and when they were at home concurrently, they didn't get on each other's nerves. They both thought being forced into the situation turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Their new roommate was better than their old one.

\------------------------

Four months in, their roommates dynamic changed slightly. One day, the workaholic woke up around 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work. He sat up in bed, stretched his arms over his head, yawned, and froze like a statue in that position when he noticed he wasn't alone. The other side of his bed was occupied by his roommate. The idiot must have gotten drunk and stumbled into the wrong bedroom. He relaxed and shook his head, smiling slightly. What a dork he lived with. He got up and went to work, thinking nothing of the incident.

The thing is, it happened again and again and again, about once a week. The workaholic was annoyed with his roommate for intruding on his personal space. He was also annoyed with his own body. He slept much better than normal with his roommate next to him. He was annoyed that he wasn't legitimately annoyed when his lazy roommate slept in his bed.

\------------------------

One day, after working way too many hours over the course of way too many days in a row, the workaholic took a day off. He got up as early as always and noted that his roommate was not home. He took advantage of the solitude to eat a leisurely breakfast and enjoy a long, hot shower. When he toweled off and went to get dressed, he remembered that he had literally not a single article of clean clothing. For more weeks than he cared to admit, he had been either too busy or too tired to run laundry.

It would have been a shame to put dirty clothes on his freshly cleaned body. A rude, inappropriate idea crossed his mind. If his roommate hadn't crashed his sleeping space uninvited four times now, he wouldn't have considered it, but the guy hadn't exactly earned a deep respect for his personal space and belongings.

Feeling just a tiny bit guilty, he crept into his roommate’s bedroom and opened his top dresser drawer. He was hoping to find something other than strawberry-patterned boxers, and he did, but it was a red t-back thong. There was no way he was wearing that, so he lived with strawberry boxers, stepping into them and pulling them over his hips.

Now to decide what else to wear. He looked at his roommate’s open closet and saw the white yukata with blue swirls at the ends of the sleeves and bottom hem the man sometimes wore. When his ridiculous roommate wore the yukata, he wore it with his right arm out of the sleeve, like he thought he was a goddamned samurai. The yukata looked comfortable. He pulled it off its hanger, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and wrapped the cloth around his body. It was indeed comfortable, and it smelled good.

He would have ‘borrowed’ an obi, but he had hit a brick wall. He should have slept in, because he was suddenly so drowsy, he thought he might fall asleep where he stood. With a silent thank-you for the clean clothing, he shuffled across the apartment to his bedroom, flopped down on his bed, pulled the covers over himself, and fell asleep.

After finishing his early morning job, the lazier of the roommates came home. He had gotten up before dawn and worked hard, and he was exhausted. He went into his bedroom, stripped down to boxers and a t-shirt, and as had become his custom, headed toward his roommate’s bedroom to take a nap.

His custom started a few weeks ago, when he got drunk and accidentally went to sleep in the wrong bedroom one night. Through his mistake, he discovered a number of surprising facts: first, his roommate’s bed was super comfortable; second, his roommate smelled good; third, he slept remarkably well with his roommate next to him. He repeated his ‘mistake’ a dozen times, three times while his roommate was in bed and nine while he was at work, and he was about to make that number ten.

He walked into his roommate’s bedroom. Mid-step and mid-giant-yawn, he froze in place. His roommate was asleep in bed, wearing _his_ yukata, one shoulder exposed. How cute. He thanked his lucky stars that he was able to witness this scene. Careful not to disrupt the slumbering man, he pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed, climbed in, and fell asleep.

An hour later, the man in the borrowed yukata woke up. He was still too sleepy to think of opening his eyes, but he slowly became aware that something felt different than normal, and not in a bad way. He was so comfortable. It was like he was in the safety of a pleasantly warm embrace. He was lying on something _soft_ – a different kind of soft from his bed.

He blinked his bleary eyes open and found out exactly what was different. He was lying on his stomach, halfway on top of his sleeping roommate, with an arm across his roommate’s broad chest. In turn, one of his roommate’s hands was resting on his shoulder – the clothed part of his shoulder, thankfully. The yukata had come open and crept down his back while he slept.

He was embarrassed on top of embarrassed. It was mid-morning. The sun was out. His roommate did not smell like alcohol. He smelled great, like a mixture of mild sweat and mild soap. He clearly did not drunkenly wander in here on accident. It made him wonder, were _any_ of the times his roommate fell asleep in his bed an accident?

The second layer of embarrassment stemmed from the clothing he had borrowed without asking. His roommate had surely caught him wearing _his_ clothing. How much of a pervert must he have taken him for when he saw it? He wanted to flee. He slowly and carefully moved to get his roommate’s hand off of him, but the movement woke the man underneath him.

Their faces not even a hand’s breadth apart, they locked eyes. The man on top was certain a yelling match about borrowing clothing without permission and sleeping in another person’s bed without permission was about to begin, but the man on the bottom simply gave a sweet smile, closed his eyes, and wrapped his arm even farther around the man wearing his yukata. Choosing to believe they were just having an extreme bro moment, the yukata thief relaxed into the embrace, lying his head down in the crook of his roommate’s shoulder, and fell back asleep.

From there, the ‘bro moments’ continued. They started sleeping in the same bed every night, sometimes cuddling, sometimes not, and they constantly borrowed each other’s clothes without asking permission.

Being so close, it was inevitable that their relationship would change again, and change it did. Unexpectedly, it changed during an encounter at the door to their shared bathroom. They happened to get home from work at the same time late one night. Both were exhausted, smelled terrible, and were in urgent need of a shower. Simultaneously, they both kindly offered to let the other shower first, and then they simultaneously politely declined the other’s offer.

Laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation, the lazier man half-jokingly suggested that they shower together. Laughing along with him, the workaholic shook his head in agreement. With pink dusting their earlobes, they both dropped their clothes to the floor and got in the shower. The first part of the shower was a serious endeavor, but once they were clean, they turned into magnets with opposite poles. Not an insignificant amount of water was wasted running over them while they kissed.

Their relationship progressed naturally from there. Eventually, there was no point to the second bedroom they were paying rent for.

They wished they could avoid telling their former roommates they were dating, as they knew the news would make the idiots insufferably happy, but it couldn’t be avoided forever. They invited their former roommates over for dinner, where they prepared to make their announcement. However, before they could say anything, the suspected criminal half of the guest couple asked if the nature of their relationship had changed. At first, they denied it, claiming to be just roommates, but when this was met with disbelief, they admitted that they _were_ roommates, with emphasis on the ‘were.’

**Author's Note:**

> The lack of personal names is intentional and meant to be “artsy,” I guess? I dunno, man.
> 
> Use of the phrase “lucky stars” was a completely intentional, not-very-subtle nod to the artist whose work inspired this story.
> 
> The happy couple from the beginning of the story can be any cop-criminal duo you want it to be.


End file.
